The “welcome” message on the website of Starlight Theatre sounds inviting:

“We are thrilled to be presenting three powerhouse musicals for you this summer,” it begins, before listing a trio of family-minded productions — “SUDS,” “The Pajama Game” and “Hello, Dolly.”

Then, near blurb’s end, a reality check: “We hope to see you and your loved ones with us for 2010.”

Like that dated but still-extant pitch, Starlight itself has seemed suspended in time.

This has marked the fourth consecutive summer without shows from the once-mighty company, whose splashy musicals at Balboa Park’s Starlight Bowl were a fixture of the San Diego entertainment scene for decades.

In 2011, Starlight — facing a million-dollar debt and a lawsuit from a stagehands union over missed pension payments — declared bankruptcy.

“It is our expectation to rapidly emerge from (Chapter 11) reorganization to once more offer the best of American musical theater to family audiences,” a key adviser to Starlight said at the time.

“Rapidly” didn’t happen. But three years later, there are finally signs that the organization — which has been left for dead more than once in its nearly 70-history — could yet rise again.

Although there’s likely to be no official announcement until fall at the earliest, longtime board president Kimberley Layton says Starlight is well along with a plan for the city-owned bowl’s revival — and with it (ideally), the company’s.

The idea is to bring the aging and disused 3,500-seat theater “into the modern era” with a major renovation (potentially funded by Starlight and its supporters, and the city) that would equip it as a year-round venue.

Layton says the organization, which has been working with the city, the San Diego Foundation, the Balboa Park Trust and others, raised money in 2013 to commission an assessment and feasibility study.

That study made it “very apparent the bowl is in horrible shape,” Layton says. “We realized that the only way this facility, organization, everything really comes back as a feasible and viable operation is, the bowl has to be renovated.”

While the report was completed more than a year ago, it became bogged down as the city faced turmoil over the scandals that eventually brought down former Mayor Bob Filner.

“So there was a very frustrating period in there of about 10 months,” says Layton, who is director of corporate and community relations for the San Diego Chargers. “(But) I’m very happy to say that is no longer the case. Things are moving along nicely.”

Renderings of the proposed project are now in the works, and once they’re ready, Layton hopes to make a full presentation to the city in early fall “and sort of kick off the next step.” (No official comment was available from the city.)

“It’s picking up steam,” Layton says. “I’m very excited — for the first time in a while.”

Fresh identity

How that might all translate into a revival of Starlight as a company — and in what form — is less clear at this point. The bankruptcy proceedings remain unresolved pending a viable business plan that could generate funds to pay creditors.

“The business plan obviously does not work without a renovated bowl,” says Layton. “The judge recognized that fact (and said), this could take a while with the city — let’s get that worked out and then let’s finish up.

“Obviously, the theater company itself has to take responsibility. There are folks that have to have money repaid, especially if the company is ever going to function as a theater.

“But the organization will come back very differently. It’ll have a fresh new board, a professional staff. It’ll be a 365-day-a-year organization. In this day and age you can’t have a company that only runs in the summer and be financially feasible. There’s too much else going on in this city.”

As for what kind of programming would go into the bowl, Layton says that “we haven’t finalized all that,” but that “there would be a combination of things — we would bring things in, we would produce.”

A key priority, she says, is “making sure that Starlight stays a community resource and asset.”

Renovated or no, Starlight Bowl still would be faced with some of the same issues that dogged it in the past.

Chief among them is that the venue is in the landing approach path for Lindbergh Field. That situation famously required actors and musicians to “freeze” in mid-performance as planes passed overhead.

It became a tradition for theater critics to tally the flyovers during each performance and include the total in reviews. Welton Jones, the longtime critic for the San Diego Union, starting in the 1960s, recalls that the number pushed 50 once or twice.

(Layton mentions the possibility of adding sail-like structures that could mitigate the sight and sound of the jets.)

Changing landscape

A problem more particular to Starlight Theatre and its programming is the mounting competition it faced in recent decades. More Broadway touring productions started making their way to San Diego, and the Old Globe Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse also began producing their own Broadway-bound shows.

As recently as 1983 Starlight still had annual revenues of more than $1 million, but the recession of the early ’90s hobbled the company, and by 1995 it was unable to mount a season.

The company enjoyed something of an artistic and financial comeback after that, but that eventually proved unsustainable.

Jones, who estimates he saw 150 Starlight productions (the first in 1966), believes that given the venue’s built-in issues, offering free shows for picnicking families may be the only viable future use for the bowl.

“There’s no reason it couldn’t be used for something approximating what it was originally for, which was kind of a casual park experience,” Jones says.

“The thing you need to remember is the American theater has changed almost totally, and the family audience that used to exist for such shows is gone. There are, however, people who do enjoy going to the park and being outdoors for concerts and (such).

“There’s no reason you couldn’t do something like that, particularly if you defang the whole criticism of the airplanes: ‘Yes, we have planes, but think of the price you’re paying!’ ”

For Layton, the “wonderful summer memories” she has of working at Starlight as a youth are part of what inspires her to make the place a destination for entertainment again.

It’s “that passion for knowing what that venue can be, and the happiness it can bring people.”